PrintOn March 7, 40 million people may be witness to a true Hollywood embarrassment.
For those who don’t spend all their waking hours scouring the Internet for the latest tidbit of film news, the 82nd Annual Academy Awards will air across the globe on March 7, but it won’t look like what we’ve come to expect from the most-watched awards show in the world. As the official tagline of the night forebodingly promises, “You’ve never seen Oscar like this.”
Past critics of the Academy Awards consistently forget the dual role the awards ceremony plays for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, one which Tom Sherak, the new president of the Academy, stressed during a conference call with college journalists. Along with rewarding those responsible for the year’s best films, the Oscars are also the main source of revenue for the AMPAS. As Sherak puts it, “We’re a 501(c) … a philanthropic organization that doesn’t really go out and raise money. So that one night is a very important night for us, to be able to do all those things that the Academy does philanthropically for the entire year.”
In recent years, however, the Oscars have seen a severe decline in viewership, which is the show’s main appeal to advertisers offering the AMPAS big bucks for a few seconds of commercial airtime. The show’s diminishing audience directly correlates to an increase in awards given to independent films, which most of the general public has no interest in seeing. Historically, the most watched telecasts have been the ones in which major studio blockbusters have been in the running, such as in 1997, when Titanic took home 11 Oscars. To rectify its decrease in popularity and relevance to most of the movie-going public, the Academy decided to double the number of best picture nominees to 10, thereby increasing the chances that more mainstream fare would get nominated. The plan worked—the average domestic gross of last year’s best picture nominees was 70 million dollars, compared to this year’s average of 165 million.
Staying true to Hollywood’s obsession with excess, the Academy was not satisfied with this lone reform. Instead, they envisioned a ceremony that would match their newfound populist agenda, starting with their two chosen producers—the men in charge of the entire night’s proceedings—Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman.
“The 10 pictures really kicks it up a notch,” said Shankman in the conference call. Staying true to this theme of expansion, the two sought to follow “the mantra ‘big isn’t bad and small isn’t necessarily good.’” Being bigger, of course, usually implies more money—just ask Avatar and its record-setting gross. Shankman continued, “We’re just trying to take this year to just really celebrate film in general and to celebrate the people who kind of pay our checks, which is the movie-going audience.”
Included in these check-payers was undoubtedly most of the Columbia student body. The most sought-after demographics in Hollywood are teenagers and college students because of our tendencies to throw down copious amount of cash on all the latest cinematic offerings. As such, the Oscars this year will be geared towards generation Rx.
“I just think it’s a younger, fresher, more fun approach to the Academy Awards,” Mechanic says. New this year: Two hosts as opposed to the traditional one (bigger is better!); a “turning,” “flying,” “very sexy,” set with numerous projections and LED screens; an increase in the frequency of dance numbers, during which awards will actually be presented; the removal of the best song nominees’ performances; a vote-at-home competition to choose the gowns presenters will wear; and most regrettably, the absence of a segment devoted to the honorary Oscar recipient. The award is normally given each year in celebration of an entire career, usually to a person who has been notoriously snubbed by the Academy. Explaining the decision, Mechanic says the producers “felt like there were more people deserving of Academy recognition.” Under such thinking, the “sexy, young talent” announced as presenters, such as Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, are more deserving of screen time than this year’s Oscar honoree, Lauren Bacall.
Though the awards were originally created to honor the best in film for any given year, the actual awards show was a time for those responsible for these and past great films to get together and celebrate each other’s works. Yes, television audiences were an essential part of the financial side of the equation, but the ceremony was never specifically meant for us. We were always voyeurs in a sense, allowed to watch as stars whose work potentially brought much happiness into our lives were rewarded for their achievements. This year, the producers—and the entire Academy—seem to be more focused on including television audiences in the proceedings as much as possible, which fits comfortably with the modern fad of inclusivity. Be it people’s obsession with voting for the next “American Idol” or the apparent allure of being physically taken into the world of Avatar through new 3-D technology, modern audiences can’t seem to get enough of literally being a part of the world they’re watching. The Academy Awards, however, have never been about following the latest trend of the day. The institution has normally risen above the fad-obsessed tastes of the majority and instead rewarded those they feel are the best as opposed to the most popular.
This year’s best picture race epitomizes this dissonance. The two major competitors are The Hurt Locker, a low-budget, barely-seen, but technically masterful film, covering a war few would like to visit in an escapist medium (and directed by a School of the Arts alumna), and Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time despite its derivative screenplay and rampant support of style over substance. The independent choice versus the populist choice.
Whatever the result, people will almost undoubtedly watch because of the number of high-grossing films nominated, an outcome which was almost guaranteed by the increase to 10 best-picture nominees.
Popularizing the actual ceremony is a pointless move that could actually backfire on the producers if it turns out as bad as people are predicting and ends up scaring away future viewers. The most prestigious awards show in the world should not pander to the general public’s fleeting fads. It should express the honor an Academy Award gives to its recipients—timelessness.